Humour Defined by Humorists.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 8, 25 August 1909, Page 43

Humour Defined by Humorists.

Asking a funny man what humour is is like calling on a distant cousin unannounced. It flusters him. The humorist, like the housewife, should have twenty-four hours’ notice. When the question was hurled at John Kendrick Bangs he leaned nervously back in his chair and said: “That is a serious question. I have been on its trail several times in the last twenty years, but I do not reel competent to take the witness stand. You must give me more time. I am bisy ju-t now, but some time I will take a week off and answer that question.” Charles Battell Loomis, who owns up to “Cheerful Americans,” is America’s most serious humorist—that is, as far as looks go. His face is so long and serious that no strange: ever cracks a joke in his presence without first looking to see if there is a band around his arm. Mr. Loomis arose to the occasion manfull v:

“Humour is an incongruous background purposely set behind some serious thing. There is nothing so sacred, nothing so ghastly, nothing so pathetic or awe-inspiring, or soul-stirring, or so deadly dull that it may not yield a legitimate laugh if it be placed in the right juxapositica with the right incongruity. “There is nothing humorous to me in the fact that to day I drop a hammer on my toe. I am filled with vexation and pain. But to-morrow, in relating the occurrence to softie friends. I am removed from the scene, and my recollected self-; what then made me literally hopping mad has now become funny to me, and I relate the circumstance and win-the laughter of my/friends. The place for 1 a hammer : s not on the toe, and. we all laugl at a thing .in an. improper background.”

A niai> in V.S.A. in 1897, wrote, “Off agin, or. ' agin—Finnigin," and woke to find himself a humorist. He has since bought and paid for a house costing £5,000 from, as he says, humour, poetry, and nerve. Without dciibt such a man ought to know what humour is. Says Strickland W. Gillilan: “Humour’s perpetual and leading characteristic is its scarcity. It is that element In literature or speech, or situation that brings about a pleasurable emotional agitation through a departure from the prosaic or monotonous. It is not always laugh provoking, but it is always exquisite and exciting. The power to appreciate or to create humour arises from quick sympathy, keen sensibilities, and mental agility that enables its possessor to see thing; from various standpoints, both natural and assumed. Th e humorous view point is usually assumed in a self-defen sive spirit by a keenly sensitive tern perament with the tendency to suffe' keenly from tragedy or monotony. Th.' truest humour is optimistic and uplifting.” Irvin S. Cobb is one of the best storj tellers is New York:- — “What is humour? Well, good humour is five cents a word, sometimes more, if you’re lucky. The other kind grades down cheaper. The best humour is like bread cast on the waters —it comes back to you after many day. with some other fellow's name attachec to it. “But if you're asking me to analyse humour for you, I’m blessed if I know what to say. Generally speaking, you might assume that humour is the art, or the knack, or the misfortune of see ing and pointing out in one way or another the funny side of things that are not funny. The underlying principle of humour, the bottom crust, so to speak, is the pain or discomfiture, o> the undoing of somebody or something : When a fat man falls down with abrupt ness and emphasis we laugh, not becausr he fell down, but because we figure that he must’ have hurt himself. Anyhow his dignity has suffered., and suffering always begets laughter.